Teach English in Huangshi Zhen - Changde Shi

IS DRILLING AN EFFECTING TEACHING METHOD? 1) INTRODUCTION Teaching is a way of impacting knowledge to students. When teaching English as a foreign language, it means the teacher will be impacting knowledge about the language to his/her students, according to the level of the student eg starters, elimentary ,pre intermediate,intermediate or upper intermediate level. There are many teaching methods and these include gramma translation, presentation/practice/production, communicative language teaching, the silent way, suggestopidia, the lexical qpproach and audio-lingual method (drilling). This paper will focus on analysing drilling as a teaching method, so that one can weigh on whether it is an effective teaching method or not. 2) AN OVERVIEW OF DRILLING AS A TEACHING METHOD According to the Teaching English British Council, drilling is a key feature of audio lingual approaches to language teaching which put emphasis on repeating structural patterns through oral practice. The objective for drilling is for student to develop good pronounciation habits. When drilling it is important for the teacher to be clear ,confident, enthusiastic and have a good voice projection. There are many types of drilling, and chorus drilling is one of them. This is where the whole class repeat the model all together. A teacher can also use drilling through flash cards together with choral drilling. In this case the teacher will show an image and word side of the flashcard for instance an apple fruit, the teacher will show the image and the word side to the children and first say this is an apple showing it to children and the children will repeat the word after the teacher. Later the teacher can show the student the image only expecting the student to pronounce and say the name of the fruit on their own. 3) ADVANTAGES OF DRILLING Drills are effective as a way of helping students to memorize and adopt concepts. For instance when a teaching want to teach students the multiplication table learning, drills are used on each number so as to help students to memorize. To add on drilling is effective when teaching words that need repitition for improvement. Also with drilling the more students repeat the words,sentances or numbers the more they are able to quickly recall the meaning of the material. 4) DISADVANTAGES OF DRILLING Although they are advantages, there are also disadvantages of this teaching method. Some of the disadvantages includes the fact that, this teaching method is not effective when teaching more abstract concepts but it is effective on basic knowledge. This therefore means that this method can not be very effective when teaching Intermediate or Upper Intermediate level students, but it is rather much effective to elimentary levels. Further more, learning is not all about memorizing but rather knowing. For memorizing does not give a deeper understanding or meaning to the word or sentance. However for starters it will be ok, for it will be only preparing them for the next levels where they will be taught deeper about the language. Drilling is also not effective, when students are not prepared enough, for they will not be able to mantain the pace if they are not clear about a concept. 5) AN ANALYSIS OF DRILLING AS A TEACHING METHOD This paper is of the view that drilling method is an effective teaching method. This is because, According to ESL TeachingEDU.org, the sore purpose of teaching English as a foreign or second language is to convey the language in an intresting and articulate way, drilling is a way of teaching English interestingly. For instance a teacher may tell the children to play a game with visual aids like forming a circle and having images of animals moving around in every child's hand, the one who will have the animal in their hand will show it to others and say the name of the animal and the other students will repeat the words. This is learning in an interesting way through drilling. When teaching English, the other purpose is to encourage students to improve their English skills through listening, speaking,reading and writing (ESL TeacherEDU.org). Drilling teaches both listening ,reading and speaking skills. For instance a teacher may write a word on the board and say it out to students who will repeat what the teacher will have said. In this way reading,listening and speaking skills are developed such that when the teacher points a word at the board after drilling, children will be able to recognize the word, meaning they will have developed reading skills. The other purpose is to assure that learning English is easy while developing a child's enthusiasm for a desire to learn a new language (ESL Teaching EDU.org). If you drill to your students with confidence,using gestures,with a clear voice and enthusiasm you will achieve this goal. To enable children to communicate simply but affectively through the development of oral proficienct in English. Drilling helps in improving oral proficiency as one of the aims of drilling is to develop good pronounciation habits. However, learning is not all about teaching students habits or creming but rather knowing or to make students being able to produce language more effectively from the knowledge they will have acquired. But as a starting point drilling is effective as it will be providing basic information to the students, and as the students will be advancing that is when they will have deeper understanding . Thus drilling is mostly effective to elimentary students as it lay a foundation on basic knowledge , but it wont be effective when teaching more abstract concepts. REFERENCE What is TEFL/ Teaching English as a Foreign Language. (ESL) Teacher. https:www.eslteacheredu.org. Drilling/ TeachingEnglish/British/Council/BBC. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk.